WOLFF, Rev. Joseph. Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, in the Years 1843-1845, to ascertain the fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly. Published, for the author, by John W. Parker, West Strand, 1845.
8vo. 2 vols. Original blindstamped green cloth, gilt; pp. xix, 352; xvi, 335, 11, [3, publisher's catalogues, dated July, 1845]; 9 lithographs after drawings mostly by by Mirza Abdul Wahab; late 20th-century fine half-morocco over marbled boards by the Abrams Bindery, Wellington, Somerset; light offsetting from previous endpapers and frontispieces, minimally spotted or toned internally, contemporary bookplate Frederick Harvey Sankey, a surgeon of Wingham in Kent, who had served aboard H.M.S. Musquito during the battle of Navarrino in 1827; a very attractive copy.
Very rare first edition. Wolff's Narrative, very soon became a "best-seller" among a public hungry for information about British interests in Central Asia. Wolff, a German Jew who had converted to Catholicism travelled relentlessly as a missionary, mainly to the Jews in the Middle East, Egypt, Eritrea, and Central Asia. After having preached to Congress he returned from the US and he 'was ordained priest by the bishop of Dromore, in 1838, and in the same year he accepted the small living of Linthwaite in Yorkshire.
Unable to remain still for long, in 1843 Wolff made a second journey to Bukhara in order to ascertain the fates of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Stoddart and of Captain Arthur Conolly. He was sent out by a committee formed in London by Captain John Grover, which raised £500 for his journey. His mission involved him in the gravest peril, for Stoddart and Conolly had already been executed and their executioner was sent to dispatch Wolff also. He escaped almost miraculously and brought to England the first authentic news of the two officers. After his return, in April 1845, he published in London and New York [sic!] his Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara … to ascertain the Fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly, which reached a seventh edition in 1852. 'Containing the early life history of the Rev. Wolff and his travels through Afghanistan, Northern India, Egypt, Yemen, Turkey, Bokhara and Persia" (Yakushi).
Lowndes, p. 2976; Yakushi W108.
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